The Bringer on a Million Horses Rides
by Mengde
Summary: It's the twilight of the world, forty years into the future, and Cloud Strife is in the middle of it all once more. The only question - which side is he on, and why?
1. I

Hello again. It's Mengde, these aren't my characters, and I wanted to write a dark piece exploring the manipulation of reader sympathies and also lots of asskicking. So, here you go. First part of two or three (haven't decided that quite yet).

* * *

**The Bringer on a Million Horses Rides**

**I**

Twilight.

It gripped the world, shrouding Edge City in murky almost-darkness. The sprawling, steaming mass of the city extended for miles. It had grown a great deal in forty years.

Twilight. The man who walked the city's cold streets tonight had lived in it now for so long he remembered other states of being only in a detached, academic sense. He had watched it creep up on his city, his friends, his government. The decline had been gradual; the schism, sudden.

And now this. He looked down at the red ribbon on his arm, the color of blood in the harsh lighting of the city streets. He felt the weight of the sword on his back, more keenly now than ever. It had been getting heavier for years now.

His only consolation was that the twilight was coming to an end. One way or another, night would truly fall now.

Footsteps. Two WRO patrolmen coming toward him, SMGs drawn.

"I need you to put the blade down, put your hands on your head, and lie down on your stomach," the first one said.

Cloud Strife gave the man a wan smile. Wordlessly, he reached up to grasp the First Tsurugi.

Both the MPs stiffened. "Slowly now," the second one warned. "We have the authority to shoot you if you try anything funny."

"Sorry, officers," Cloud said, drawing the sword out of its harness. "I'm afraid this isn't going to be very funny."

* * *

A mile away, across the Tuesti Bridge, in the security center of the WRO Tower, the CCTV feeds showed it all – what little there was to see.

One moment, the man was standing there, slowly pulling the enormous sword out of its harness. The MPs gave a cry of alarm and fired.

The next was nothing but a bright flash. Then the feeds, all eight of them, went dead.

"He's marchin' right down fuckin' Main Street," Reno said, arms crossed, his craggy, aged features pinched into a grimace. "He'll cross the bridge and be here in ten minutes. Count on it."

Rude looked up at him from his station, frowning through his silver-grey beard. "We need to hold him off."

Reno sucked air in through his teeth. "I guess we gotta at that." He patted his partner on the shoulder. "Guess there's no escapin' this time, eh, Rude?"

The Turk cracked the barest hint of a smile. "Just like old times."

"How long until the big guy gets here?" Reno asked one of the WRO techs in the security center.

"ETA on the chopper is twenty minutes," the man replied.

Reno sighed. "Think we can hold him for ten minutes, Rude?"

Standing from his seat, Rude twisted his head until his neck gave a series of satisfying pops. "Tall order."

With a laugh, Reno made for the door. "Wouldn't be any fun if it weren't. Come on, let's go die."

* * *

Smoke rose in Edge City.

A string of explosions rang out throughout its neighborhoods, its shopping centers, its power plants. Carefully placed, causing a minimum of casualties and a maximum of environmental damage and mayhem. Lights flickered and died.

WRO forces went into a mad scramble to try to contain the fires, to restore power, to find the perpetrators before they could strike again.

Barret leaned back in a deck chair on the roof of his building, watching the chaos. With his flesh hand he pulled a cigar out of his vest, raised it to his mouth with a trembling grip. The thumbnail of his metal hand peeled back to reveal a lighter; he massaged the cigar with its flame as he pulled, enjoying the taste.

He raised the lit cigar to the solitary figure making its way toward the Tuesti Bridge. "Go get 'em, Spikey," he rumbled. "Gotta make the sons of bitches pay."

The door to the roof burst open. WRO soldiers poured through it, surrounding the old man in the deck chair.

"Barret Wallace," the leader said, "under the authority of the World Regenesis Organization, I'm placing you under arrest for murder, conspiracy and destruction of public and private property."

Barret took one last long pull on the cigar as he regarded the men surrounding him.

"You and what fuckin' army?" he asked.

* * *

Half a mile away, Cloud had not turned when he had heard the string of explosions, but he did look over his shoulder when he heard a sudden symphony of gunfire erupt on the rooftop of a building.

He knew the sound of that gun by heart.

"Thanks, old man," he murmured. "See you soon."

He kept striding toward the bridge, First Tsurugi in hand. Even in the dimness of twilight, he could see the soldiers assembling to try to stop him. His mako eyes glowed in the darkness.

"There's no point," Cloud whispered to himself. "It'll all be the same soon anyway."

The soldiers opened fire. He didn't break stride.

The bridge flashed with blue light.

* * *

Half a world away, in the Palace of Wutai, Yuffie Kisaragi watched the news from her bed.

She was not ill, but she did suffer a plethora of aches and pains from wounds and scars accumulated over a lifetime of adventuring, so when she was at home, she tended to keep to her bed. Now she watched the WRO News Network reporting on terrorist bombings in Edge, and she saw the view from a newscopter as it circled the scene of an attack on Tuesti Bridge.

Yuffie hadn't seen Cloud in fifteen years, not since the implosion of the group. As the camera view zoomed in to get a look at him, she saw that his hair had gone grey, his face had become lined with age, and he'd acquired a nasty-looking scar on his cheek.

But his eyes still burned with green fire, and he still handled the First Tsurugi with impossible speed and power.

The bodies of the WRO troops went flying. The reporter was in hysterics despite his best effort to control himself.

"I wish I could be there with you, Cloud," Yuffie whispered, not caring about the vast distances between them. "I wish I could be making the sons of bitches pay."

Fifteen years ago, he'd told her to let it go. That there was no point in retaliating, that fighting the WRO would just lead to more death and devastation for a weary populace.

She didn't know for sure what had changed his mind about the prospect now. It could be any one of a million things that had gone wrong in the intervening time.

But she had a fairly good idea.

* * *

A last Blade Beam exploded the tank the WRO had used to block the bridge's exit. The shell it had fired at Cloud lay smoking at his feet, his sword still ringing softly from stopping it dead.

For a dead man walking, he felt very much alive.

The Tower Plaza lay before him, lit softly by the glow of electric lanterns placed about its edges. In the center of the plaza was a great fountain, and atop the fountain was a statue of Reeve, reaching toward the sky, a hopeful expression on his face.

Cloud ignored it as he stalked toward the entrance of the WRO Tower. He would not waste time or energy defacing the statue.

Two figures barred his way. Cloud felt his mouth twist in a halfhearted approximation of a smile. "Just you two, huh?"

"Yep. We're tonight's entertainment." Reno grinned, bouncing his EMR against his shoulder. "Sorry if you were hopin' for more, Cloud. I know we're an old act, but we're gonna have to do for now."

"I'd rather not fight you guys," Cloud said, leveling the First Tsurugi at the pair of them.

"Scared?" Reno asked. "'Cause I wouldn't blame ya."

Rude suddenly spoke. "No," he said, slipping on his leather gloves. "Not scared. Just a hypocrite."

Cloud glared at him. "I don't care if it's hypocritical. It's the truth. I'd rather not fight you."

There was genuine scorn in Rude's voice. "Like I said. Hypocrite. You want to kill us –" he sprang forward, fists blurring – "you look us in the eye!"

With one hand, Cloud blocked Rude's opening strike with the First Tsurugi. He let his guard drop as the Turk rebounded from his sword, knowing Reno would pounce on the opening; as the redhead leapt at him, Cloud sidestepped past the EMR thrust and buried his free hand, curled into a fist, in Reno's gut. He went flying, crashing headlong into the fountain, spraying chips of stone everywhere.

"Partner!" Rude shouted. He stiffened as the air curled menacingly past his ear, pulling in his arms just barely in time to stop Cloud's attack with the broad side of the First Tsurugi's blade. The blow lifted Rude off his feet, sending him skidding along the ground until he came to a painful halt against one of the benches in the square.

"Sorry," Cloud murmured.

* * *

Cloud moved toward the entrance of the Tower, then stopped at the sound of movement behind him.

Reno stood, clutching his side with his free hand. "Don't you fuckin' pity us," he growled despite the immense pain in his chest. "SOLDIER boy. Everythin' you are is a cheat."

"Please don't make me kill you, Reno," Cloud said. "It'd make Rufus really sad."

"I TOLD YOU NOT TO FUCKIN' PITY US!" Reno snarled, charging again..

This time he swung the EMR in a broad arc, its tip crackling. He knew there was no way Cloud would be able to block it with his sword for fear of electrocution, and if he dodged away from it, it would mean he was gaining distance from the Tower entrance.

Reno was more than a little shocked when the man caught his EMR by the tip. Electricity crawled along his muscles, making his already-spiky hair stand on end, but Cloud stood there, immobile, until the rod sparked its last, the metal distorting beneath his grip.

Then he hit Reno over the head, so fast and vicious the Turk never even saw it coming, so hard the impact barely even registered, it was too enormous to comprehend. Reno lay there, twitching, the distant, rational part of him wondering just how badly that had concussed him.

"Sorry, Reno," Cloud said. His voice sounded muffled, distant. "It's really hard to swat an ant without killing it, you know?"

Reno blacked out before he could summon the presence of mind to flip off the son of a bitch.

* * *

Rude glanced down at his watch. They'd lasted two minutes. The chopper wouldn't be here for another eight.

_Stall him._

"We only did what we had to do," he said, forcing himself up into a sitting position on the bench he'd crashed into, trying to ignore the shooting pains that lanced throughout his body.

Cloud, who had resumed walking toward the Tower entrance, stopped. Turned.

Rude had expected the man to be angry, or scornful. But all he saw was the sadness, deep as an ocean and twice as terrible. He could see Cloud Strife somewhere in that ocean, the incredible pressure pushing and twisting him into strange and broken shapes.

"I know that," Cloud said. "So am I."

"You don't have to do this," Rude said. "Nobody's making you. Nobody's holding a gun to the head of the world but you."

Cloud cocked his head. "Don't try to do that, Rude. You put the gun in my hand. I don't have a choice anymore."

"You've got no right!" Rude growled.

"Neither did you," Cloud said. "Didn't you love her too?"

Rude stiffened. "You bastard," he said, very softly. "That's not fair."

"That's life," Cloud said, turning on his heel and leaving Rude to bleed out on the bench.

"But," he called back over his shoulder, "not for long."


	2. II

**II**

Tseng lay across a console, feeling the uneven metal surface growing sticky with his blood.

It was all he could do to stay conscious and watch as Cloud strolled through the control room, prodding at buttons and looking at gauges. WRO soldiers lay dead all around him, hacked or burned or blown apart.

He had told Elena to stay on the top floor and guard the board members. It was the one thing he'd been able to do right.

"You won't find it," he managed to groan.

Cloud looked over his shoulder. "Oh. You're not dead." He said it in a detached, academic tone.

"Not quite yet," Tseng chuckled, immediately regretting it as pain flashed through him. "I'm old, but I'm not useless yet."

"Just stay there, then. I don't want to have to kill you."

Tseng watched Cloud continue to prowl around for a minute before he spoke again. "I told you that you won't find it. You might as well give up."

"I know you kept it," Cloud said. "Yuffie told me that much. So I _will _find it, even if I have to tear the building apart to do it." He cocked his head. "The board members are here, right? For a dinner party or something. Maybe one of them will know."

"We haven't even looked at it in years," Tseng hissed. "The project's shut down. Nobody's left who could help you."

He felt an involuntary shudder run through him as Cloud focused on him. "No," the blonde said. "I'm thinking there's one person who's left."

Tseng began to hyperventilate with pain as Cloud hauled him up by his shoulder, aggravating the deep chest wound he'd given him. Face impassive, Cloud pulled him over to a console that still functioned and slapped his hand down on the thumbprint reader.

"Ask it," Cloud said.

"You know I can't do that," Tseng replied.

Cloud blinked. "Ask it," he repeated himself, his tone unchanging, "or I'll find Elena, and I'll make _her _ask it. I don't want to, but I will if I have to."

"If you go through with this she's dead anyway," Tseng gasped.

"No," the blonde said with a pained smile. "Somebody might still stop me. So the question you need to ask is, do you ask the computer and gamble on that _maybe _happening, or do you do nothing and know that I _will _find Elena and do what I have to do?"

Tseng stared into the man's glowing eyes and saw nothing but resignation and detachment. He knew that look.

It was the look of a man who was marching willingly toward death.

"Central," Tseng croaked. "Give me the location of Project Terminus."

The computer chimed that Project Terminus was located in the subbasement, section A16, and that it was under Code Omega classification and access restrictions. A far corner of Tseng's mind noted how utterly appropriate that designation was.

"Thank you," Cloud said. He let Tseng drop to the floor.

* * *

Back in the security center, Tseng's access of restricted data was instantly reported and analyzed. A signal went out to all WRO personnel in the city, ordering them to ignore the devastation and chaos caused by Barret's explosives and return to the WRO Tower. It was a Black Alert.

The WRO was at war.

With one man.

* * *

The troops within the tower piled into the access corridors. Power had been cut to all the elevators, so the intruder had no choice but to take the long way down to his destination.

Their orders were clear: delay Cloud Strife's descent by whatever means possible, at any cost.

The first black-ops division took up position at a hallway intersection, killed the lights, donned their light-gathering goggles. They were trained, they were prepared, and they had the advantage of position and numbers.

Until they heard him singing.

In a low, unpracticed voice, Cloud Strife sang quietly to himself as he walked, the First Tsurugi trailing sparks along the floor.

"_The minstrel boy to the war is gone, in the ranks of death you will find him…_"

One of the new recruits, a young woman by the name of Katrina, sucked in a sharp breath of air at the sound.

A moment later, she took a Blade Beam to the torso.

"_His father's sword he hath girded on, and his wild harp slung behind him._"

The rest of the unit opened fire. The First Tsurugi whirled about in a lethal spray of metal, glowing with spirit energy, sending bullets flying and ricocheting wildly through the corridor. The glow of it overloaded their goggles; Johnson swore and ripped his off. A moment later he had a shortsword buried in his chest; Cloud had pulled it from his blade and hurled it even as he continued deflecting bullets.

"'_Land of song!' said the warrior bard, though all the world betray thee…_"

He was suddenly on them, the narrow space not making a damn bit of difference as Cloud cleaved his sword straight through the metal walls on its way to his targets. Blood sprayed in a fine red mist, superheated by the spirit energy cascading up and down the First Tsurugi. Almost offhandedly, Cloud pulled the shortsword out of Johnson's chest.

"_One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard, one faithful harp shall praise thee._"

* * *

The enormous, armored door in front of him said A16 in large, block letters. Underneath that was the symbol for Omega.

He blew the door apart with a Blade Beam and stepped through into the darkness.

The interior of the room hummed with a quiet rhythm, rising and falling, but not mechanical enough to be a bellows or hydraulics; it was tremulous, sometimes uncertain. Like breathing.

Cloud felt for a switch, found it. The lights came on at his command, and he was suddenly looking at Project Terminus.

It hadn't started life as a WRO creation. He remembered glimpsing its obscene angles and shuddering valves in the background of the video feed the radicals had transmitted to Reeve. The sickly-green glow of the thing's heart permeated its entire breadth, greased metal and pulsing pipes glistening wetly. It was not housed in section A16; it _was _section A16.

He felt the weight in the breast pocket of his coat. It was not a large thing he carried, but it weighed heavily on him, more heavily than the First Tsurugi.

"It's disgusting, isn't it?"

Cloud turned to look at the other man. "It is," he agreed. "And you kept it anyway."

Vincent Valentine, WRO trashman and immortal enforcer, stepped through the ruins of the armored door. "To try to understand it," he said. "You know that the knowledge contained in this thing could provide key breakthroughs for us in medicine and ecological management. Dr. Aleph was unbalanced, but he understood things that nobody else did. Reverse-engineering even _one _aspect…"

"If it was so damn useful, why did you go to such extreme lengths to make sure it was never used?" Cloud demanded. "You were willing to destroy it before you let the Sons of Weiss activate it." He closed his eyes. "You were willing to sacrifice your friends to stop it."

Vincent stood there for a moment in stony silence. "That's not fair, Cloud," he finally said. "Once it _had _been stopped, there was no more need to destroy it if it was protected. We could study it, we could –"

"You refused their demands for the Protomateria and they killed Tifa for it!" Cloud snarled, cutting him off. "You _let her die, _and then you let it sit in a basement for fifteen Goddamn years and didn't learn a single thing from it!"

"What were we supposed to do?" Vincent demanded. "Give the Protomateria to them? Let them activate it? Cloud, you know what could happen!"

"That's why I'm here," Cloud said, reaching into his coat. He drew out the glowing orb, a galaxy of illuminated pinpoints sparkling inside it. "I'm going to turn it on."

"You'll kill everyone," Vincent snapped. "I can't let you do this, Cloud."

"Just like you couldn't let me go in and save her? You, and Red, and Reeve, and the Turks, talking about 'not negotiating with terrorists' and the 'greater good.' She was my _wife, _Vincent! She was my _everything. _What the hell would you do if it had been Yuffie in there?"

Vincent's eyes went narrow and his expression venomous at that barb. "The same thing," he said.

"That's the difference between you and me," Cloud said, slipping the Protomateria back into his coat. "That's why I'm going to turn on this Terminus thing."

"I can't let you do that."

"I know you can't. But I have to do this. This is the only way I can see Tifa again."

He saw Vincent freeze. "No."

Cloud nodded. "It's terminal, Vincent."

They stood there in silence for a minute, the only sound the susurrus of the machine's breath. "I thought the Great Gospel eliminated the stigma," Vincent finally said.

"The mako treatments from the SOLDIER program made the JENOVA cells mutate and reassert themselves," Cloud told him. "I'm the only person left alive who'd ever have this particular problem. My spirit energy's corrupted, Vincent. I won't rejoin the Lifestream when I die. After everything we went through, the Planet's going to cut me off like a diseased limb. I'll never see Tifa again. So I have to turn on the machine."

"That's not fair," Vincent said again.

Cloud shook his head. "Of course it isn't. It's unfair, and arbitrary, and stupid. I saved the damn world, Vincent, and this is my big payoff." He raised the First Tsurugi until it pointed square at his old comrade. "So everyone got a few extra decades. Great. It'll all just be the same in the end, Vincent. Just like if I lost that day. Better, even. You ever stop and think this thing might be an improvement?"

"No, I don't," Vincent growled, laying a hand on Cerberus. "Because it's not my job to think about that. It's my job to keep the WRO safe, and to do that I need to stop you from turning on Project Terminus. So I'll say it again: I can't let you do this, Cloud." He drew the massive handgun, leveled it at Cloud's head. "A lot of good men and women died to buy me the time to get here and stop you."

With a sad, tired smile, Cloud observed, "I always did wonder if I could take you in a fight."

"Guess we're going to find out."

He squeezed the trigger.


	3. III

**III**

Vincent was unsurprised to find Cloud had lost none of his speed. The blonde threw himself out of the way of Vincent's first shot, deflected the second with the First Tsurugi, and slammed his shoulder into Vincent's gut before he could get off a third, sending him flying out of the room.

"Let's fight somewhere else," Cloud said, forcing Vincent back with a flurry of wild swings of the First Tsurugi. "I need that machine undamaged."

He flared up with spirit energy. Vincent brought his gauntlet up in a hurried block just in time to take a Braver that sent him flying headlong through several concrete walls before slamming hard into a metal one. He straightened up, dust streaming off of him, and realized they were in the underground warehouse where he'd first fought Azul to a standstill all those years ago. His left arm hung useless at his side, the bone broken clean in half by the Braver. If he hadn't been wearing the gauntlet, he would be missing his forearm.

"This is nice and roomy," Cloud observed, stepping through the holes Vincent's passage had left in the walls. "High roof, lots of space. Don't see any of those exploding barrels, either."

"Hazardous waste was removed from the subbasements decades ago," Vincent said, ignoring the pain. "You didn't get the memo?"

"I guess I was out of the loop on a lot of stuff." Cloud's tone remained conversational, even flippant, but Vincent could see the bitterness in the man's eyes. "You sure you can fight like that?" he continued. "Looks painful."

"What, this?" Vincent asked, raising his mangled left arm.

He saw the shock blossom on Cloud's face as the limb twitched and writhed within the gauntlet, the flow of blood stopping as the flesh knitted and the bone reset itself.

"Just a scratch."

He hurtled forward, swirling his cloak around him, as he sighted in on Cloud again, firing as he charged. The shock stayed on Cloud's face, though Vincent could tell the man was wondering why a gunman was charging at a swordsman. The blonde still swatted the bullets out of the air, though, losing none of his focus, and as Vincent closed within melee range, Cloud transitioned seamlessly from a guard into a Climhazzard.

Vincent heard the man gasp with surprise as he caught the razor tip of the First Tsurugi with his gauntleted hand.

"You were probably wondering why I was giving up the advantage of range," Vincent said. "It's because I don't want to kill you, Cloud, and that's all bullets are good for. And…"

As Cloud tried to pull his sword free, Vincent holstered Cerberus to free his right hand and tore one of the component swords off of the First Tsurugi. He shoved Cloud backward with his gauntleted hand, feeling the wound on his palm knit up as soon as the sword left his body. He looked down at the weapon he held; it was the hollow sword, its hilt incorporated into the body of the blade itself.

In one furious motion, he bent it in half until it snapped.

"Your Final Omnislash is the only attack you've got that could conceivably kill me," Vincent finished. "Without all the pieces of your sword, you can't do it." He held out a hand to Cloud. "Give up. We can work this out."

He pulled the hand back just in time to avoid Cloud slicing it off.

"It's the only attack I've got that can kill you?" Cloud asked, his glowing eyes finally showing a glimmer of anger. He lowered his sword, its edge still keening from the spirit energy which had rushed along it as he'd struck. "Is that what you think, Vincent? You shouldn't make assumptions based on how I was fifteen years ago."

Vincent leapt back, drawing Cerberus again. "If you've got something to prove," he said, "then bring it. Full strength. If I make it clear how you can't win, then maybe I can dissuade you."

"Not in a hundred years," Cloud said with a sad smile.

He was inside Vincent's space in a second, his charge exceedingly fast. But Vincent was fast too, unnaturally fast. He read Cloud's swings, ducked or leaped or rolled out of the way. The blonde's footwork was flawless, the way he used the weight of his body and the weight of his sword to balance and complement one another was perfect – the pinnacle of human capability, extremely impressive in a sixty-four-year-old man.

But Vincent was much more than human.

"Come on!" he said as he ducked another swing at his head. "I said full strength!"

"Give me a minute, Vincent," Cloud protested as he began to glow with a lethal amount of spirit energy. "It takes me a while –" he raised the First Tsurugi above his head – "to psyche myself up to kill an old friend!"

The Blade Beam he threw at Vincent was massive, bigger than he was. It washed over Vincent, setting his cloak aflame and searing away his flesh. He hit the ground a mangled lump of blood and bone.

He got up three seconds later, his flesh tightening itself back over his body.

"I've got too much spirit energy myself for the beam to disintegrate me outright, and any damage you do goes away almost instantly," Vincent said. "I've gotten stronger over the years, Cloud. Please don't make me kill you."

Cloud grimaced. "Sorry, Vincent. That just means I'll have to hit you with a bigger one next time."

"Your ability to manipulate spirit energy's vastly increased over the past forty years, it's true," Vincent said. "But I told you, it's not enough to kill me."

"Nobody likes a gloater," Cloud replied.

Vincent felt the thread of his patience fray. He snapped Cerberus up at Cloud and double-tapped it, throwing out six rounds in a quarter second at Cloud's head and chest, then hurled himself backward and kept doing it, reloading as he expended his ammunition. The blonde didn't falter until the renewed barrage of bullets, dodging or blocking them. Vincent went to reload a third time, and in the half-second he wasn't firing, Cloud hurled another massive Blade Beam at him, even larger than the last one.

He saw the surprise on the blonde's face again as he levitated out of the way of the beam, moving far faster than even his enhanced body would be able to convey him.

"Physical laws have always had trouble applying to me after my alteration," Vincent said, hovering half a foot off the ground with only the force of his will and a little spirit energy. "Last chance, Cloud. Don't make me kill you."

That struck a nerve. He watched Cloud's eyes widen, his face contort into a grimace.

"You're pretty damn generous with handing out chances when you're in a position of power," Cloud said. "You like being this way, Vincent? You in the air, me on the ground? I bet you _hated _it when the Sons of Weiss took the advantage away. Made you realize you were vulnerable. I bet letting Tifa die was pretty easy, considering your only alternative was giving up your power."

Vincent snarled. "How _dare _you –"

"What? Get angry? Tell you the truth?" Cloud sneered. "Or just try to goad you into fighting _me _at full strength so I don't feel like I need to hold back?"

In an instant, Vincent hovered behind Cloud, Cerberus pressed to the back of his head. The man's body stiffened with surprise as he realized, too late, what had happened.

Vincent hardly even hesitated as he pulled the trigger.

* * *

Cloud rolled back to his feet, panting.

There had been a split second, a tiny instant, of hesitation before Vincent had fired. That was the only reason he was still alive.

His shoulder bled, but only a little. The bullets had grazed him as he'd dodged.

"You get it now?" Vincent asked, his feet settling back to earth. "This is the difference between us now, Cloud. We're both special, but you're also human, and old, and tired. I'm none of those things – not really."

Cloud shook his head. "No, Vincent. That's not it. You know what the difference _really _is?"

_If you get really famous and I'm ever in a bind… You come save me, all right? Whenever I'm in trouble, my hero will come and rescue me. I want to at least experience that once._

He opened his eyes, not remembering having closed them.

"I keep my fucking promises."

As soon as he saw the rage hit Vincent's face, he threw another Blade Beam, big enough to tear a building in half, then immediately rolled to his left, knowing Vincent would dodge to _his _left and thus put the beam between them. He came up and fired another beam at where Vincent should be –

"Too slow," the gunman said, flashing past him, Cerberus leveled.

Cloud aborted the Blade Beam, transitioning the attack into a block, barely getting his sword in the way of the bullets aimed for his head. He dropped, threw another Blade Beam, then kipped up into a Finishing Touch, the razor-sharp wind expanding out from around him to fill the entire room and lifting him into the air where he could keep better track of his enemy's location.

He saw Vincent out of the corner of his eye, the wounds from the Finishing Touch already closing up. Cloud threw yet another Blade Beam, inverted himself as the momentum from the Finishing Touch made his feet hit the ceiling, and pushed off at Vincent in a Braver. The gunman effortlessly dodged the Blade Beam by a hair's breadth, then brought up his gun. He fired directly at Cloud's sword as he brought it down. The bullets slammed the First Tsurugi off-course. The blade, still crackling with spirit energy, crushed into the ground beside Vincent.

The impact clove a furrow neatly through the center of the entire room, splitting it in two. Cloud could see the floors below through the fissure.

He could also see Vincent's boot coming up to kick him in the gut.

The blow was painful, but nowhere near as painful as the ones that followed – Vincent holstered Cerberus in one instant and was beating Cloud in the next, the taloned fingers of his gauntlet deliberately curled into a fist. The strikes rocked Cloud back with their sheer, brutal power. He could feel his enhanced bones bruising, even cracking. It was all he could do to even follow the attacks, much less defend himself against them.

He managed to block a punch which seemed slower than the others, but he realized too late it was a deliberate feint, leaving him open for the follow-up tornado kick which cleanly broke his clavicle and sent him flying across the room. Cloud hit the far wall, hard, and slumped to the floor, the metal behind him warped from the force of his impact.

Unless Vincent had changed dramatically in the past fifteen years – a possibility he couldn't discount, but not one he would bet on – Cloud knew the gunman would close for a finishing blow, either with Cerberus or his gauntlet. He wouldn't let Cloud lie there and bleed, now that he was done with the lecturing and the attempts to 'save' him. Mercy and Vincent Valentine in a killing mood were concepts far removed from one another.

So, rather than hesitating, Cloud immediately hurled himself back to his feet, ignoring his screaming body, and pulled out his best trick, the one he'd been saving just in case.

Vincent, as Cloud had suspected, had already closed the distance when Cloud launched into an Omnislash. The gunman reacted instantly, dodging the first strike, again by a hair's breadth.

That meant he was caught flat-footed when the swing also blasted forth a Blade Beam. The impact spun Vincent around, throwing him off-balance, even with his ability to levitate. The other fourteen strikes also produced Blade Beams, all of which hammered Vincent at point-blank range in addition to the damage caused by the sword itself.

The last blow sent what was left of Vincent hurtling back across the room to slam wetly into the wall.

Cloud dropped to one knee, panting. He'd worked on that move for ten years, knowing he would need it to beat his old friend. He just prayed it would be enough –

Then he saw the thing at the other end of the room explode with dark energy.

* * *

Pain.

Worse than when he'd first woken up like this, all those decades ago. Worse than when Rosso had ripped the Protomateria out of his chest. Worse than when Chaos had begun to slowly consume him, fiber by fiber.

But he was still alive.

And he was angry.

"**That was good, Cloud," **he said as he stood up, the transformation eradicating his wounds. **"And if you were just fighting me, it might have won you the battle."** The energy engulfing him dissipated, letting him see his enemy once more. He bared his fangs, his eyes glowing yellow in the dimness.

"**But you're also fighting Galian."**

He hurtled forward, picking up Cloud and pinning him to the wall with a massive, grey-furred hand. The blonde cried out as Vincent squeezed, crushing his body against the metal. Vincent raised his other hand, Galian's angry white hellfire blossoming in his palm.

"**Any final words?"**

Cloud opened his eyes. "Yeah," he murmured. "I'm disappointed."

"**What?"**

The man gave Vincent a pained grin. "I'd just hoped I could win without… cheating."

Pain suddenly exploded all up and down his right arm. Vincent staggered backward, disbelievingly watching as his blood gushed out of a dozen deep lacerations all along his limb.

Cloud dropped to the ground, a single wing sprouting from his back. Pale flesh, spiderwebbed with angry black cracks, stretched across cruel bones to reach nearly five feet in span. Its inner edge, razor-sharp, dripped with Vincent's blood.

"'He who fights monsters,' right?" Cloud asked, that pained smile still on his face.

Vincent roared, thrusting his hands forward and unleashing a torrent of pure hellfire. Cloud's wing instantly curled around in front of his body, dispersing the brunt of the blast, then whipped back out to its full length, slapping the rest of the attack aside. As it moved away from Cloud's body, Vincent realized the man was once again alight with spirit energy, except this time it was no longer the familiar blue-green flames of his aura – it was black, the color of the void, tinged with the deep blue of utter solitude.

"Bye, Vincent."

Vincent Valentine's last thought was that he couldn't bring himself to blame Cloud.

After all, he _had _asked the man to bring his full strength.


	4. IV

**IV**

"_And they ride, they ride, the drama takes the lead; they ride, they ride, the beast of Heaven their guide…"_

He was bleeding, and it was black.

Cloud swore softly to himself as he dragged himself back toward the chamber of Project Terminus. He'd known that using the power of his JENOVA cells would accelerate his mutant Geostigma; he'd just had no idea how much.

And the pain. He'd forgotten the pain.

But he walked, the wing a terrible weight dragging his left shoulder down, heavier than the First Tsurugi by far, even though such an emaciated, cruel appendage should weigh next to nothing. He walked, the wing dragging along the floor behind him, striking sparks from the metal and the pavement.

He walked into the room which breathed, and he saw a man.

Rufus Shin-Ra had not aged well. His hair had thinned and gone completely white. His beautiful features had hardened, then sagged.

But he stood straight in his white coat, the shotgun dangling almost casually from his left hand, as he stood regarding the machine.

"Please don't try to stop me, Rufus," Cloud said, straightening up and flaring out his wing despite the horrific pain which the motion sent shooting through his body. "I've killed enough old friends for one day."

Rufus glanced over his shoulder at him. "So you beat Valentine," he said. "I would have owed Reno a substantial amount of money, if you hadn't killed him." His voice had lost none of its sonorous depth or power over the years, nor did it seem he had lost any of his control. If Cloud hadn't known the man, he wouldn't even have known Rufus was upset.

"It wasn't easy," Cloud said. "Now step aside and let me finish my mission."

He saw the man's lips quirk. "I suppose I should at that. The last time we fought, you killed Dark Nation and I barely got away with my skin." His white coat fluttering in the sighing of the machine, Rufus turned to look at Cloud full-on. "But maybe you'd like to let me talk for a while first, and then you can go ahead and end the world as we know it."

"I've waited fifteen years," Cloud said.

"Isn't the usual corollary to that statement 'I can wait another few minutes?'"

"Not in this case. Move, Rufus."

With an exaggerated shrug, Rufus walked over to stand in a corner. "Have it your way. I'll just talk while you insert the Protomateria and the machine runs through its startup routine. I know for a fact that it will take seven minutes to prime."

Cloud paused as he reached into his coat for the Protomateria. "How…?"

"Let's go back to twenty years ago," Rufus said. "A certain wealthy individual, for philanthropic reasons, became interested in the idea of manned expeditions into the Lifestream. He contacted a Lifestream-studies expert, a man by the name of Victor Aleph, and asked him to design a machine to facilitate that kind of exploration."

"You're the one who commissioned the construction of this thing?" Cloud demanded, waving at Project Terminus. The machine seemed to quiver in response.

"Of course," Rufus said. "But I've never liked first-person narratives. Do you want to hear the rest or not?"

Narrowing his eyes, Cloud crossed the room to the core of the device and inserted the Protomateria. The sickly-green glow immediately brightened, then began to shade away from green into the violet spectrum. "Talk. Like you said, we have seven minutes."

The breathing of the machine began to accelerate.

"Dr. Aleph had pioneered many theories and made many discoveries about the Lifestream," Rufus said. "Thus, he was uniquely suited to take on a task of this nature. For four long years, he slaved away at the problem. The philanthropic individual kept tabs on his progress, and when Dr. Aleph finally produced this machine, which he chose to call _Terminus Est, _he was pleased at a good investment."

Cloud felt the bizarre constructions around him begin to hum at a frequency he could feel in his molars. The valves shuddered and produced forked tongues of blue-white flame.

"But Dr. Aleph told the individual that the machine could not be used without forever altering, perhaps destroying, the fabric of our reality." Rufus gestured at the machine, at _Terminus Est. _"You see, you and several others have been swept up in the physical aspect of the Lifestream and had your spirits interact with entities on the other side, but your bodies were always _here, _on the Planet. Dr. Aleph explained that this machine was capable of crossing the physical threshold between this place and the Lifestream – not the current of mako energy running through the Planet, but the _actual _Lifestream."

The hum increased in volume. Cloud realized it sounded less like a hum and more like a moan, or a toneless scream.

"And," Rufus continued, "Dr. Aleph explained that upon completion of this project, something became obvious to him. The threshold between this world and the other one, between the Planet and the Lifestream, exists as an absolute concept. It is not like a wall, where a section can be brought down and later restored. It either exists, or it does not."

"So breaking one part of the wall breaks the entire thing, forever," Cloud said. "Now I understand why everyone was so adamant I not use this thing, and why the Sons of Weiss wanted it so badly."

Rufus smirked. "What did Reeve tell you before he died, Cloud? That this machine would let you see your loved ones again at the cost of the rest of the world?"

"Something like that. He certainly didn't lay it out in clinical terms like you did." Cloud shrugged, though the pain was steadily getting worse. "But it doesn't really matter. I've come this far, and I'm not going to stop now. Like I told Vincent, without me, there wouldn't _be _a planet for this machine to change. I bought everyone a few extra decades when I stopped Sephiroth; now I'm – how would you put it? – cashing in on my investment."

"Clever, Cloud," Rufus said. "A very neat rationalization of what you're doing."

"So why are you here?" Cloud asked. "You don't seem particularly interested in stopping me. I mean, you didn't even try to shoot me in the back when I put the Protomateria in."

"That wing of yours would doubtless just block the slugs," Rufus said with a sigh. "Honestly, Cloud? I came here to tell you the precise ramifications of your actions. That's all. I didn't truly expect that knowing the hard details would cause you to magically reconsider, but I never like to see anyone make an uninformed decision."

"Thanks, but the details really don't matter to my decision." Cloud glanced up reflexively as _Terminus Est _shuddered, the blue-white flames pouring from its orifices growing. "My mutant Geostigma's terminal. The doctor told me that a few days ago. I'll never make it to the Lifestream myself when I die. I'll never see Tifa again – or Aerith, or Zack, or Mom. Going to them myself… or bringing them to me… whatever this is, it's the only way to make it work."

"I understand that," Rufus said. "But I don't think it's a good enough reason. So I don't think I'll be giving you the code."

Cloud felt his stomach lurch. "What?"

The floor shifted. There was a sudden blast of hot air behind him. Turning, Cloud saw the core of the machine extruding a panel. It was a simple interface, a touch-screen device with a numbered keypad and two buttons, one labeled CONFIRM and the other ABORT.

"I had Dr. Aleph program in a code to initiate the final breaching sequence," Rufus said. "So nobody could actually activate _Terminus Est _but me."

"You son of a bitch," Cloud growled. He took a step forward, then shuddered and nearly collapsed to one knee as his body screamed in protest. He slammed the First Tsurugi's point against the floor so he could lean on the sword, the pain making it almost impossible to stay upright.

"I lied before," Rufus said, sounding almost apologetic. "I _did _come here to tell you all the details of the project, but my purpose in telling you them was mostly to stall. I knew you would have to resort to desperate measures to beat Valentine, and the only such measures available to you were your JENOVA cells. I also knew you wouldn't survive long after using them, considering how it would advance the spread of your Geostigma." He gestured at his shotgun. "And I didn't bother to shoot you in the back because I didn't want to waste my ammunition."

"I'll kill you," Cloud hissed. "Tell me the damn code so I can go home to her, Rufus. Before these things eat me alive from the inside and I go to Hell."

"You know I can't do that. I'm here to save the world, Cloud, not destroy it." Rufus shrugged. "I'm sorry it has to be this way, but –"

He stopped talking abruptly as Cloud hurled himself forward and drove the sharp point of his wing through Rufus's eye socket, up into his brain.

"GIVE ME THE FUCKING CODE!" Cloud roared.

He raked metal fingers through Rufus's dying mind, the JENOVA cells lending him their powers even as his body consumed itself trying to fight them. He saw the code in his mind's eye, seven shining digits, and knew they were Reno's Shin-Ra ID number.

Cloud let Rufus fall limply off his wing. _Of course, _he thought. _That isn't a number he'd forget._

His legs gave out from under him. He felt _Terminus Est _pulse around him, the flames rising ever higher, the machine screaming as it approached its own threshold. He dragged himself across the floor back to the core, leaving a trail of viscous black blood in his wake. With all his remaining strength, Cloud hauled himself upright, leaning against the console. He punched the code in with trembling fingers.

"Cloud…"

Even though he could feel his very life ebbing away, Cloud looked back at the dying man on the floor, his face covered in blood. Rufus stared up at Cloud with his one remaining eye, his shotgun leveled at his back.

"Would… you want them… to see you like this?" he hissed.

The shotgun spoke. Cloud felt the slugs tear into his body, spraying black all over the machine, black which clung wetly to the metal in some places and boiled away with the force of the flames in others. His eyes bled it, obscuring his vision.

"Tifa, I'm sorry," Cloud whispered.

He pressed a button. He couldn't see which one it was. He didn't know which one he wanted it to be.

He felt himself dissolving.

* * *

"It must not have worked," Elena said.

Tseng, standing across the room in the ruined remains of Project Terminus, turned to look at her. "What?"

"What's left of the Protomateria _is _in here," Elena replied. "The machine was clearly primed, and from the looks of this explosion and the fact that we're still here, talking, it just must not have worked."

With a scowl, Tseng hobbled across the room to stand next to her so he could look into the core himself. "You're telling me we went through all that hell to protect something that doesn't even do what it was supposed to do? That Aleph was a crazy hack and built a machine that didn't even work?"

"Either it didn't work," Elena said, "or it did something other than what it was supposed to do. I mean, does it feel like we're in the Lifestream right now?"

"I wouldn't know," Tseng told her. "I've never been." He crossed his arms. "But if Cloud activated the machine, he must have gotten the code from Rufus. And Rufus would never give that up willingly, right?"

"Not unless he wanted Cloud to win, I guess. Dammit, there are a lot of questions I doubt we'll ever get answered."

"Mm." Tseng stared into the blackened core of the machine.

The glassy remains of the Protomateria were inside. The sphere had been cracked clean in two directly down the middle, the halves oddly symmetrical.

"So what do we do now?" Elena asked.

Tseng looked up at her. "We do the only thing we can do after the apocalypse," he said. "We keep on living."

They left that place, then, returning to the elevator they'd taken down. Tseng smiled at Elena as the doors closed them in and the elevator began to rise. They would go back to their lives, the world would keep turning, and his wounds would heal.

They would always heal.

**Fin**

* * *

Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed writing it. A small note: I'd just like to say that there is no one "right" interpretation of exactly what happened at the end. **I **don't know the final result of this conflict. So feel free to think whatever you want without worrying about Word of God! Until next time.


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